Only 5 out of 47 reserves can sustain tiger population: Report

Just five tiger reserves in India can sustain big cat population on their own, says the final tiger estimation report.

Updated on: Mar 8, 2015, 23:43:51 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Just five tiger reserves in India can sustain big cat population on their own, says the final tiger estimation report.

The preliminary findings of tiger estimation 2014 had recorded 2,226, a 30% increase since 2010, but sources say the final report to be released by end of March will highlight the danger for rising tiger population in India.

“There are not enough green corridors for tigers to disperse and find a new home,” said Qamar Qureshi, co-author of Tiger Estimation 2014 and a senior scientist at the Dehradun-based Wildlife Institute of India. “The report raises ecological issue about future of tigers who are territorial animals.”

The final report has identified just five areas — Corbett National Park (Uttarakhand), Kanha Tiger Reserve (Madhya Pradesh), Sunderbans (in India and Bangladesh), Kaziranga National Park (Assam) and Madhumulai-Nagarhole-Bandipur tiger habitat (Karnataka) — where tigers can survive on their own because of good female population.

Tiger reserves having more than 20 adult tigresses can sustain good population on their own because of genetic viability. The other 35-odd tiger reserves of the total 47 need unbroken wildlife corridors to get gene pool support and sustain the big cat population.

The condition of green corridors connecting tiger reserves have deteriorated in the last four years, the report says. Around 60% of the 2,226 tigers live inside protected areas -- tiger reserves and national parks.

Sources said the final report will show that tiger population has not revived outside the reserves, mainly due to the government announcing a series of linear projects that create hurdle in the movement of animals in the green corridors.

“If we don’t have the green corridors connecting tiger reserves, our protected areas could become glorified zoos,” a senior wildlife ecologist said.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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